


Smithereens

by cherryblur



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Gore, M/M, Public Humiliation, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 11:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/cherryblur
Summary: “I want you all to watch,” He says, and almost frowns when he can’t see Josh’s face in the crowd.Tyler’s screams make up for the mess.





	Smithereens

**Author's Note:**

> hahahah

“They’re here,” Is what Tyler hears much too early in the morning. But he’s up, he’s dressed, he’s packed and ready to go because he’s been waiting for this day for longer than he realizes.

The day he’ll go home. 

They say Josh will take him home, to Trench. 

It’s raining outside. 

Whispers fill the halls, just quiet enough for the bishops to not understand.  
The sermons are full of anxious knees perched onto pews.  
No one knows of their plans. 

It’s almost time, Tyler thinks.  
He doesn’t have a watch, but the sky changes colors and becomes a dull grey, like the clothes on his back. 

Right now, he’s waiting. Still.  
In the place Josh told him, the underground cavern. It’s seculded enough, with passages that the Banditos can take safely.  
Listening to the rain as it patters on the cement walls surrounding them.  
He listens for footsteps and hears one pair.

They should be in groups, he thinks, and frowns.  
Groups of marching boots, some covered in peeling yellow tape but instead he hears one set of feet and feels a subtle hand on his neck. 

He’s frozen.  
“Tyler,” Nico says softly.  
“What could you possibly be doing down here at this time of day? If I recall you have a sermon to attend.”

Tyler swallows, focuses his eyes into the darkness ahead of him and wishes for the torches to bring him to salvation.  
“I was curious,” He responds. The hair on the back of his neck rises when lilting fingers dig into the skin. “About the ruins beyond here.”

He’s not scared. He knows that Nico is aware of that. 

“Curious?” The bishop muses. “You wouldn’t be thinking about escaping again, would you?” 

Tyler shakes his head. “Never.” 

Nico paws at his backpack. “What is this, then?”

“Supplies,” Is the bullshit answer he gives. 

“Looks more like previously confiscated items, Mr. Joseph.”

Nico swings a pair of white, round sunglasses in front of the brunette. “I remember quite clearly how I removed these from your quarters last week. Do tell, wherever did you get them from?” 

Tyler shifts on his feet. “Josh gave them back to me. I left them.” 

There’s no point in lying. He’s been told countless times and has had the words beaten into him on many occasions.

“Josh,” Nico breathes. “The Bandito leader. I recall him quite well. Always trying to incite rebellion in my people, wasnt he?” 

Tyler’s heart beats faster. Nico is always the one to ask more questions than he gives answers.

“You said you had quite the soft spot for him, no? During one of our last lesson times, I do believe.”

Lesson times.  
Tyler was taught good, saintly actions during their lesson times and generally walked out with bruised knees and watering eyes.  
But he was treated much better than others, who rarely survived their private times.

“I do,” He choked out. Where were they?  
Maybe they overheard and fell back. They’d come back once Nico was gone.

They wouldn’t have, though. Josh would fight to the death for his other half. 

“Where is he now, Tyler?” Nico asks, like he already knows. 

Tyler’s chest feels hollow and full of pain. “I don’t-I don’t know.” 

”You act like you’re expecting someone,” The bishop breathes. “You weren’t lying to me just now, were you Tyler?”

The brunette straightens himself and says more firmly, “No, sir.”

”So you do not know the whereabouts of Joshua Dun?”

”I don’t know.”

Nico moves to brush against his side. “You don’t know.”  
He smiles beneath his veil.  
“I could show you, if you’d like, then?”

Tyler feels like he might throw up and his legs wobble beneath him. He can’t stay humble or strong in the head bishop’s precense. Who was he kidding?  
“Where is he?” 

Nico takes a shaking hand in his firm one and leads the brunette out, out of the underground, back into the dull daylight that constanlty surrounded Dema.  
It’s still raining when they step out into the city square. 

It’s still raining when Tyler’s boots squeak and splash into puddles, his hand trembling and clammy in Nico’s cold one.

He can’t see what’s going on through the precipitation, through the crowd nestled around the center of the square.

Nico lets him stand upon a stack of boxes, in which he promptly falls off of.

It’s still raining when the image of Josh tethered to a whipping post burns itself into the back of his brain like a hot steel brand. 

Nico stands beside his crouched form, scans over the crowd of shielded citizens, most casting their gazes towards the soaking ground.  
Banditos are held in the back, pointless and utterly defeated by their lack of a leader. 

Tyler is frozen, eyes focused on the ground, on whatever could hold him down on this forsaken stone because his mind can’t believe what keeps registering through the waves of grief.

He struggles to stand, calls out Josh’s name in such a cracked, broken voice only the man himself could register it. Nico watches. 

The citizens split like the Red Sea for him. They know him. They know his face, have heard his voice, his songs.  
Josh slumps with his arms above his head and dazes in and out of consciousness. His naked back oozes and spurts out red over ragged skin.

“Josh,” Tyler chokes, panting and panicking because oh _God, that’s a lot of blood._  
He’s halfway across the square when a bishop grabs him by the shoulders. 

Another raises his arm with a dripping red whip and delivers one of the last lashes from a set of 50.

“Josh!” Tyler screams, kicks against the robed figure holding him back and cries like the pathetic citizen he truly is.  
“Let me help him,” He begs. His eyes meet Nico’s and he pleads through the form of quivering lips and thick tears. 

Nico’s face is unreadable under the veil. 

Some of the Banditos recognize him, try to call out for him too.  
They are muted faster than they can fight. 

Josh is out, face contorted into a mask of pure, saturated anguish when a wet lash digs into the grooves carved out of his skin. 

He bleeds, and only knows the difference between blood and rain because of how thick the blood is.  
And the chunks buried in the rivulets. 

Tyler falls onto his face when the grip holding him back is released, and for a split second he can taste blood seeping from his nose.  
He’s too determined.

He’s skidding to his knees, tripping over himself at Josh’s side with tentative hands and shaking shoulders.

”Josh,” He sobs. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”  
The punishing bishop is gone, palms running over the wet whip curled in his hands. Tyler cards his fingers through sopping curls, desperate to hear that voice again.

Nico has stepped out-the only one facing them now.  
He speaks to the crowd.

”I want you all to watch,” He bellows.  
“I want you to watch this man die in the arms of his beloved, for he was someone who tried time and time again to overthrow our city of order. People like him,” He says, voice taut with distain.  
“Deserve to die.”

Tyler’s heart drops.

”You’re gonna be okay,” He tells Josh soft enough, and tries to make sense of the mess that was his back.  
Josh groans and comes to with nothing but pain painted across his face.

His lolled head rises to see the brunette, eyes struggling to stay open.  
“Hey pup,” He says in that playful tone, now drenched in pain. The smile he gives is all but happy. It’s more full of pity.

No one intervenes. They don’t dare.

”It’s pointless to help,” Nico continues, this time to the two. “He will be dead by noon.”

With a sweep of his hand, the rest of the bishops lead the now-prisoners and other citizens back into the city.

”Josh,” Tyler whispers. It has stopped raining, as if the clouds themselves have started to mourn in silence.

”I’m sorry,” Josh rasps. “We were sloppy, babe. I couldn’t get ‘ya.”

He spits blood and Tyler fumbles with the latches of his cuffs until Josh is slumped in his arms, a moaning mess of what was once such a powerful leader.

”You’re going to be okay,” Tyler positions Josh and tries not to touch the gaping wounds littering his shoulderblades.  
“It’s going to be okay.”

Josh hisses and sets his jaw in an attempt to numb his own pain.  
Nico watches.

He coughs and winces when his muscles constrict under his wounds and they spurt out new watery streams of blood over the jagged pieces of skin still left on his back.

It’s so pink underneath it all.

Nico takes a step closer once the entire square is finally cleared.

Tyler knows he couldn’t bear to see his little rabbit in such unbearable grief.  
He looks up to the bishop and sees him contemplating.

”Nico,” He trembles. “Please.”

He stares into eyes he can’t see.

”Don’t let him die.”

It’s a hard decision, sure, but quite an easy one too.  
One he’s thought about sometimes, but never tries to attempt.

“At what cost, Tyler?” Nico asks in reply. He bargains with no one but Tyler.  
“This favor could cost me more than you’ll never begin to know.”

”Anything,” The brunette chokes out and shakes his head. “I’ll do anything to save him.”

”Even for me?”

” _Yes._ ”

Josh’s eyes flutter and Tyler’s clothes are tinted darkly. He’s losing so much blood. His eyes roll back into his head and he slumps further into Tyler’s arms.

Nico’s hands are around his neck before he can beg any more.

•

Tyler is safe.

He’s safe with Nico. (He’s safe alone.)

Josh is safe.

He’s safe with the Banditos. (He wishes not.)

Tyler won’t ever escape again. He won’t ever see true sun. He won’t ever play music or see the color yellow again. He lives miserably happy knowing he saved the one that really matters to the people of Trench.

Josh will lead his troops into battle. He will see bloodshed, including his own. He will live miserable, knowing he’ll never have his other half by his side.

Tyler serves next to Nico. He serves so much. He fasts and prays and tries to cleanse himself of all his sins that he almost dies a few times.

Nico could never let his sweet rabbit die, however.

Not as long as there was fear to instill.

Not as long as there were Banditos to execute publicly, while the brunette watched with familiar eyes as they screamed out his name before the axe swung down or the noose was heavy.

Tyler watches them all die with a cold hand around his waist keeping him steady.  
His cheeks are hollow, skin pale. Nico keeps him in his own quarters day and night.  
He does nothing but pray and serve the mastermind of it all.

After all, what was left? Josh will never come back for him.

He made him promise that.

Sometimes, though, he likes to think Josh had crossed his fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> this was shittily written but it was in my head and i didn’t want to forget it so here


End file.
